Expanding the Boundaries of Theater for over 30 Years

Celebrated performer Steve Cuiffo has immersed himself in the work of Lenny Bruce, delivering sublime, hyperreal, verbatim resurrections of the great American thinker’s monologues. The New York Times has declared, “Lenny Bruce is brought back from the dead in the form of Mr. Cuiffo,” who will perform a compilation of Bruce “bits” on still-hot topics, including organized religion, race, illegal and prescription drugs, sexual mores, obscenity, and the Constitution. It’s fifty years later, but Bruce’s often prophetic, freedom-loving skewering of American culture is as dazzling, hilarious and insightful as ever.

In Steve Cuiffo Is Lenny Bruce, Cuiffo resurrects the fast-rising Bruce of the early `60s, in the sky's-the-limit period before he became a fixation for lawmen and lost his cabaret license in a downhill spiral toward premature death. There is no film or video of Bruce from this period; Cuiffo's characterization arises from his study and synthesis of the rhythms, delivery and vocal attributes of Lenny's audio recordings, and the jazz and finger-snapping tempos of the Beat era that Bruce loved.